


A Machine for humans

by PrinceofBadassery



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Steampunk, AoS Charaters in later chapters, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Non-Consensual Body Modification
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-14
Updated: 2014-11-25
Packaged: 2018-02-25 07:28:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2613395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrinceofBadassery/pseuds/PrinceofBadassery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I found the lack of Steampunk AUs in this fandom a bit disturbing so here is my take on it.</p><p>James and Natasha are on the run from HYDRA, from SHIELD and basically every goverment organization in existance. Raiding HYDRA bases has become their daily bread as they try to clear their names, there is only one problem.</p><p>James's artificial arm is slowly killing him. </p><p>They need to find a solution and fast.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MamaMcCallMe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MamaMcCallMe/gifts).



> I set the chapter count to 3 but it might end up being a little longer. I'm not so sure yet.

The door closed with a heavy thud and James turned the large wheel to engage the closing mechanism even before he sat down the heavy duffle bag. Natasha had already dropped hers off when she heard him wince at the door. She frowned at him and but he just gave her a loop-sided smile and kicked the duffle bag closer to her.

“Good run.” He said. “Don’t think we need to stock up on food any time soon.”

“James?” She looks at him warily and he raises an eyebrow at her.

“Yeah?” He still had that smile on his face, but even in the dim light she could see something was off. She calculated in her head how long it has been since the last injection, it had to be thirty hours at least, but he didn’t seem in pain.

She shook her head and bent down to her bag, working it open.

“Nothing. I got some more stuff while you’ve been lurking along in the shadows.” She pulled out a wooden box about a foot and a half in length, eight inches in width and a few inches in height. James raised an eyebrow again.

“Maintenance kit.” She heaved the heavy box on the table and opened the clasps. Inside were a variety of rods in different length and diameters as well as cogwheels made from different alloys in all shapes and sizes. “Because you never think about getting spare parts and I think you’re also running low on oil, so there.” She gestured to the box for him to take a look. “I think it was intended for one of the smaller assembly machines in that factory, too bad they left it in that locked office where everybody could see it when they climbed up to the window.” She smirked.

He stepped closer to the table, his mechanical arm making soft whirring noises as he brought it up to turn the box around.

“We’ll probably have to modify them at least a bit, but they’re close enough.” She said, studying his face as he looked into the box, his mouth a tight line and eyes hard set. He nodded stiffly. Natasha knew how uncomfortable he was with the mere notion of needing maintenance on a regular basis, how he resented every piece of metal that was part of his body, but that didn’t mean maintaining them wasn’t a necessity and she’d be damned if she let him hurt himself because he intentionally neglected that part of him.

“They’ll work.” He finally said and she reached up to tug a strand of hair behind his ear, brushing her fingertips lightly over his skin. He was ice cold.

“James.” Her eyes widened and she grabbed his face with both hands, turning him towards the light. He made a surprised noise, but she didn’t let go.

He was white as a sheet, his skin was freezing and yet sweat pearls formed around his hair line.

“James…” She said more softly as he turned his eyes away and looked to the ground, his flesh shoulder sagging and she could feel the barely contained tremors wrecking his body that he tried so desperately to hide. She wanted nothing more than to berate him for keeping this from her, but right now there were more pressing matters.

“Let’s get this off of you.” She lightly trailed her hand over his mechanical arm before turning around looking for the screwdrivers she would need to get it disconnected from his body. He had almost managed to get his coat off when she turned around, but the sleeve hole had caught on a gear and was stuck, he was struggling to get it loose without tearing the coat any further, but his movements were clumsy.

“Hey.” She said softly, putting her hand on his. He almost instantly started shaking and almost collapsed against the table if he hadn’t braced himself with his right hand. She removed the coat and threw it aside, guiding his arm to the table. He was breathing heavily but put the forearm on the table, turning the hand so it was flat on the wooden surface. He leaned down to take the weight of the arm off the shoulder socket and Natasha quickly inserted the screwdrivers into his shoulder, one in the front one in the back, to press down on the release mechanism. Normally he would do the one in the front himself.

“Ready?” Natasha asked. He gripped the desk harder, knuckles turning white, and nodded once. She angled the screwdrivers slightly, putting pressure on the release mechanism, and the arm disconnected with a faint click, now only held up by the leather straps across his chest. James ground his teeth and hissed, face contorted in pain. He once told her removing the mechanical arm felt like getting his arm ripped off again. While he couldn’t feel the arm itself the nerve endings connected to it reacted very much in the same way and the pain only slowly receded to a dull ache.

Natasha helped him unbuckle the straps of the leather harness that held most of the weight of the arm. Once that was done, it fell onto the table with loud clank. Natasha ushered James over to the chair and made him sit down, he was still breathing heavily. His shirt was soaked with sweat and clung to his skin. Through his shirt she could see the outline of the metal on his chest. The arm only connected to one spot on his shoulder but the mechanics that allowed him to move it like a real arm reached further into his body and were only partially visible on the outside. When they had left HYDRA they had been able to remove some of the tubing of the bio-chemical components of the arm, which at least allowed him to wear a shirt under the harness, albeit he still had to cut off the sleeve.

Natasha pushed the hair back from his forehead, giving him a concerned look.

“You’re not escaping the lecture, you know, but you look like shit.”

“Thanks.” He mumbled, head lulling to the side.

“Stay there, I’ll get everything prepped.” Natasha walked over to a cabinet and pulled out a small metal box from a drawer, behind her James groaned.

“Please, Tasha, I can go another few hours.”

“Shut up.” She hiked up her skirts and sat down on his lap, facing him and placed the metal box on the table behind him to his left. “You look like death warmed over.”

The little box contained a little brass device roughly shaped like a gun, with a slot on the top for the ‘ammunition’. Lined up against the top where several vials containing brightly colored liquids in different shades. Most of them where green, but there were a couple of blue ones and very few pink ones at the very bottom.

He brought his arm up and held her around the waist, very pointedly looking at some spot over her left shoulder,

She opened a few buttons on his shirt and pulled it open. There were already black lines forming under his skin where the metal connected to his flesh and she traced them lightly with her finger. They couldn’t wait much longer. The access port on his neck that was directly connected to his bloodstream was a cruel reminder of the things that had been done to him as it was an easy way to pump drugs into his system without the use of syringes. It had been used to administer the drugs that kept him compliant and under their command. Tubes could be directly screwed onto it that connected to containers that were stored in either his arm or on his chest for a convenient steady flow of mind altering substances, they had removed the containers and tubing, but the access port remained. Now they only used it to give him the medicine that kept his body from rejecting the metal that was grafted onto it.

Natasha loaded the device with a vial containing a bright pink liquid. She cupped his jaw with one hand, turning his head so he would look at her. His skin was clammy under her hand and he could barely keep his eyes open anymore. She wondered how he even managed to get back in this state. He has been getting better at covering up the symptoms and that worried her.

“Ready?”

He nodded weakly and Natasha pressed the end of the gun to the access port and pressed the trigger. As soon as the vial had emptied James went limp in her arms. His arm dropped from her back and his head fell forward against her shoulder. She wrapped an arm around him and kept him upright. Steadying his head with the other and freeing his airways so he wouldn’t suffocate with his mouth and nose pressed against her shirt. She brought the arm she had around his back up to his neck, feeling for a pulse on the other side and found nothing.

“Come on, James.” A crucial few seconds ticked by before she could feel the faint flicker of his heartbeat under her fingertips. She let out a shaky breath and pressed a light kiss to his temple. It never got any easier, the moments when he wasn’t breathing right after administering the medicine, when she couldn’t feel his pulse and he was all but dead weight in her arms. It gripped her heart and scratched its way down her sternum inside her rip cage, she blinked away the tears that threatened to spill.

She kept her fingers on his neck feeling his pulse getting stronger as she watched the black lines around the metal on his neck fade. It was a good sign, but she knew the ones on his chest and back and down his side under his shirt, the much darker ones would take longer, a lot longer. But he would be okay, for now, and that was all that mattered in this moment.

She felt him take a deep breath and then exhale shakily. He groaned and opened his eyes, blinking at her a few times and she smiled at him, not trusting herself to speak yet. She stopped measuring his pulse, there was no need anymore and instead softly stroked the skin around the metal on his neck with her thumb. He turned his head to nuzzle into her neck and felt him slowly move his arm, his hand coming to rest on her lower back. She knew he wasn’t quite there yet. She’d give him a few more minutes before ushering him to bed.

“We’re running out.” He mumbled suddenly and it was half a question half a statement. She ran her hand through his hair and nodded. There was no denying it. His hand pressed a tiny bit tighter against her back.

“How many?”

“Three.” If they were lucky they would give them another six days on top of the potential two with this administration. That is if he didn’t use the arm too much, at worst, it would be half that. She tightened her arms around him, pressing herself as close to his body as possible, not caring that some of the metal pieces on his shoulder and neck were digging into her skin.

“We’re going to be okay - you’re going to be okay.” She said and she wanted him to believe her. The shudder that wrecked his body told her he didn’t. Normally they would have been able to stock up on more vials maybe even a larger container from the abandoned bases they raided, but the two latest trips had turned up nothing.

They would have to think of something and soon.

Natasha leaned back, bringing her hands up to either side of his face and stroking her thumbs over his cheeks.

“It’s going to be okay.” She said again and looked him in the eye, her own still watery, but her gaze steady. And she could see it all, the raw pain behind these kind eyes, in the slight lift of his eyebrows, the creases next to his eyes, the tight line of this lips and he must have seen something in her eyes because his face suddenly collapsed and he brought his hand up the back of her neck, holding her head and pressing a kiss to her temple.

“I’m sorry, so sorry.”

And a small smile crossed her lips.

“I’m going out again.” She said and finally broke the close contact between them. She pushed herself of his shoulders and stood up, leaving him with a bewildered look on his face as he stared up at her.

“We need more intel, we have nothing to go on.” She straightened her skirts and made to grab her jacket, and she knew what he was thinking and she knew what he was planning on doing even before she heard him shuffle around the table behind her.

“No.” Natasha rounded on him and bodily stepped between him and the arm lying on the table, glaring daggers at him. He hung his head and looked for all what it was worth like a kicked puppy, scruffy beard and mussed hair and all.

“James, I know you are feeling better now, but you are not well yet. I can do this alone, you have to rest. I know you know that, so please. Can I trust you not to put that on while I’m gone?” She gestured to the arm on the table.

“Of course.”

It came a bit more hesitant than she would have liked but she trusted him as she had said. He turned away and walked over to the cot on the side of the room. He sat down heavily, wincing and holding his side, further proving her point that he was in no shape to leave the ship again. She watched him while she was getting ready and once she had her equipment packed she walked over to him and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

“Lie down please.”

“I will, once I don’t feel like throwing up.” He looked up to her and gave her a loop-sided grin.

“Alright, that is acceptable.” She smiled and ruffled his hair some more, earning her a dry huffed laugh.

The air was cold and fresh when she stepped out of the ship and the noise from the city carried all the way out to their hiding place in the woods. Determined Natasha started walking towards it, ready to throw herself into the nightlife of the wealthy aristocrats and high-ranking military personal, she’ll be damned if she couldn’t find at least one person who would be of use in solving their little problem.

 


	2. Chapter 2

When Natasha returned to the ship she found it completely dark except for the single light bulb hanging over the table. James was fast asleep in the cot, blanket only half pulled over him. He was half lying on his right side, half on his back with a pillow under his left shoulder.

She had good news to tell, but she didn’t have the heart to wake him, when he was sleeping so peacefully. She sat down next to him, gently pressing a kiss to his temple and when he didn’t stir to that she went to check how his shoulder was doing. After undoing a few more buttons on his shirt she could see that the black lines on his chest were almost gone. She pushed the fabric over the empty shoulder socket and his side and what she could see of his back were in a similar state. He was healing. There was always a chance that the medicine would stop working, but so far they had been lucky and he hadn’t built up a resistance to it.

“Any particular reason you’re undressing me in the middle of the night?” James suddenly mumbled, words slurred from sleep and eyes still closed.

“Just checking on you.” She smiled and he scoffed.

“Checking out that hot body you mean.” He remarked sarcastically.

She pulled his shirt closed again and gave him another peck on the cheek.

“Don’t be like that, I’ll join you in a second.”

He only hummed and fell back asleep.

Natasha quickly undressed and put her hair into a braid before slipping under covers next to him. She fluffed up a pillow and snuggled close to his chest, careful not to lie on his arm and make it fall asleep. Tomorrow would be an eventful day, but there were still a few hours left in the night and she meant to take full advantage of them. After an exhausting day it didn’t take long for her to fall asleep.

She woke up several hours later to light streaming in through the cockpit window into the interior of the ship and someone breathing down her neck. She stirred lightly, snuggling deeper into the blanket and closing her eyes again.

“Nat.” James whispered behind her.

“Hmm?” She was not ready to get up.

“Nat.”

“Yes, James?”

“I have to pee and you are lying on my arm.” He whined and Natasha’s eyes shot open. She rolled onto her stomach and scooted down, how the hell had she ended like that? She patted his arm still only half awake.

“Are you alright?” She blinked at him and he chuckled.

“Yes, I just really have to use the toilet for like an hour now.” He propped himself up and climbed over her. She watched him stagger to the bathroom a little unbalanced due to the lack of arm then pressed her face into the pillow and groaned. Might as well get up now, she thought.

James spent a lot of time in the bathroom and by the time he came back out, Natasha had already prepared breakfast. With the supplies they had gathered the night before it was the easiest it had been in ages and actually having fresh fruit to eat was a luxury these days. He looked a lot better than the night before, he had some color back in his face and the angry black marks on his neck and chest were gone. He had also shaved and washed his hair, which was still slightly wet and slicked back. He looked good.

“Oh my god. Apples.” He said and flopped down in the same chair he sat in last night. Natasha had cleared some space on the table and had moved the tools and mechanical parts that were lying around aside. She had strategically placed James’ arm out of reach for now. The less opportunities he had to put it on, the less tempted he was. She only felt a little bad about that strategy.

She grinned at him as she watched him wolf down apple slices, bread and cheese until he finally looked up and stopped mid-bite.

“What?”

“You’re in such a good mood and I haven’t even told you the good news yet.”

His face fell as he swallowed the last bite, which was the exact opposite reaction she had been expecting.

“And I really mean good news.” She reached across the table to put a hand on his arm. “I met Coulson yesterday, well, I say met, more like saw him. He was undercover, but I managed to squeeze some information out of staff catering the party, who so happened to be spies.” She patted his arm, then stole an apple slice from his plate and popped it in her mouth.

“Who’s Coulson?” He frowned at his food, the way he always frowned when a memory escaped him.

“I don’t think you ever met him.”

His features softened at once and he looked visibly relieved.

“Sorry, I thought I had mentioned him at some point. He was the one who got the team together back in New York, I actually thought he died in action; at least that’s what Fury told us. Lying bastard.”

James had dropped his hand under the table and was frowning at the leftover cheese on his plate.

“Eat!" She told him. "Anyway, so I got my legs wrapped around that guys throat and he’s suddenly spilling all the secrets, spies are not what they used to be, but at least we know where we need to go now.” She raised an eyebrow at James, who had looked up at the last part.

“You got the location of another base out of him?”

“No, better. I know where the runaway team Coulson has got together is going to be in two days and we are going to do a bit of hijacking.”

“Do they know where one is? That’s cutting it awfully close.” James swallowed hard and dropped the remaining cheese on the plate again, he had lost his appetite.

Natasha sighed. “It’s our best option, he probably knows more than we do in that regard, he might even be able to give us some back-up. He has a lot more resources, well, not as many anymore since SHIELD fell, but at least more than what we have and if the guy was right, he also has a team of scientists on his ship.” She pointedly looked at him. “They might be able to replicate the medicine, which would solve our little problem more permanently.”

“You mean my problem.”

“As long as we’re together, it’s our problem. You gonna eat that?” She nodded at his cheese and he shook his head, pushing his plate over the table.

“The plan is to wait here until nightfall, fly over to the port, get fuel and water, then we’ll head north. They’ll leave Kingstown tomorrow afternoon; the ship is disguised as a small cargo ship, but it shouldn’t be too hard to spot, especially not from above.” She grinned.

“Okay, that sounds like a plan. What do we do till then?”

She shrugged. “What we usually do. When was the last time I looked at your shoulder?”

“It’s fine.” He blocked her off at once.

“Nah, it’s been at least two weeks. At the very least it could use some oil.” She pointedly raised an eyebrow at him. “We got an important mission tomorrow, you don’t want it to act up now, right?”

“Fine.” He grumbled and started to unbutton his shirt. Natasha got up and dragged her chair behind him. She leaned down and gave him a peck on the cheek.

“Hey, just a few minutes and it’s over. You can check the arm in the meantime, use the new stuff.”

James scoffed but pushed his empty plate away to make more space. They rearranged the table so the toolbox and the new maintenance kit were situated to James left and the arm directly in front of him. It was not ideal for him, but this way Natasha could reach it as well, when she was sitting behind his left shoulder.

She picked up a small screwdriver and got to work on removing one of the access panels on James’ shoulder. They did this fairly regularly, Natasha usually insisted on doing it once a week if James didn’t block her off every now and then, he often refused to do any more maintenance than was strictly necessary because he was uncomfortable with anybody working on his shoulder. Natasha suspected it was mostly due to the fact that he couldn’t do it himself and had to rely on somebody else. Back at HYDRA the mechanics had done that and none too gentle, he had told her, not that it had mattered since he had been drugged out of his mind most of the times anyway. Just a piece of machinery that needed to be fixed.

She laid the panel and the screws on the table and rearranged them neatly so nothing got lost and removed a second panel, doing the same. Meanwhile James had removed several plates on the arm and was testing the gears and rods that made up the inside of it.

“This mostly needs oil.” He mumbled.

“That’s good.” Natasha had finished removing the panel and had switched the screwdriver for a small metal rod that had a little cotton cloth wrapped around one end. She was removing some of the oil build-up, when she spotted something. She grabbed a pair of tweezers and tried to pull the foreign object out, but it was stuck.

“Can you move it a bit, there’s something stuck.”

James mumbled something but obediently moved the gears and Natasha pulled the thing free. She held it in front of James’ face and leaned close to his ear.

“That is part of your shirt. You still think this is unnecessary? Wasn’t that bothering you?”

James ducked his head and refused to look at the object in her hands. “I hardly noticed it.”

“But you did notice it. James, you could have just said something.”

“It wasn’t hindering the movement.”

“It could have at any point.” She lightly slapped him on the back of the head and dropped the small bit of oil-stained cloth on the table. “This probably lost some threads in there as well.”

They worked in silence for a while, Natasha pulling out the threads that got tangled in the gears and James moving them once in a while so she could pull them free whenever she nudged him. Once they were done and all the panels had been screwed close again, James pulled on his shirt and Natasha insisted on trimming the edges on the sleeve hole again, before anything else got stuck in the mechanics again.

“Don’t you dare!” Natasha slapped James hand away when he moved to put the arm on. “You don’t need it when we go to the port and you gotta make that injection last till tomorrow.”

He dropped his head and nodded once.

“Good. Now I’ll change and you get the ship flight ready.” She grabbed his face with both hands and kissed him briefly. “Yes?”

“Yes.” He gave her a small smile and got to work on putting smaller things securely into cabinets and strapping larger objects down, while Natasha disappeared into the bathroom. The trip to the port would hopefully be routine, they had been there before and had their trusted merchants but they could never know.

Several hours later Natasha found herself in a heated discussion with the fuel merchant who had jacked up the prices. James stood behind her looking menacing with his dark long hair half obscuring his scowl. He had donned his black duster and the empty sleeve that was flapping in the wind did nothing to diminish his display of power with the amount of weapons visible on his body. The coat did a bad job concealing them. It might have also been the knife he was expertly flipping with his hand now and again that convinced the merchant to sell the fuel for the usual price.

**Author's Note:**

> English is not my native language and I am sure there are tons of mistakes in this, so please forgive me and tell me what I need to correct.


End file.
